The Philadelphia Flyers haven’t been a great hockey team for quite a while now. It’s been over six years since the club could make a mildly feasible case that it was — when a 103-point team took down the Stanley Cup-favorite Pittsburgh Penguins in a wildly entertaining first-round matchup — but ever since that apogee, the Flyers have largely delivered unspectacular results.

The website FiveThirtyEight noted in a study published on Tuesday that “according to our algorithm, no team in major pro sports has been more consistently mediocre over the past five seasons than the Flyers,” and the general reaction from Philadelphia fans was not one of anger but of universal agreement. While the team has rarely been outright poor over this half-decade, it has failed to stand out, either.

It’s not due to an absence of star-level talent. Occasional down years aside, Claude Giroux and Jakub Voracek have been two of the league’s most...